Beatles Project #2 – P.S. I Love You

The b-side of Love Me Do. Here is the first taste of things to come – McCartney’s saccharine side.

I don’t have problems with songwriters showing a softer, emotional side, but there is a line between showing a softer, caring side and oleaginous sentimentality. This is on the wrong side of that divide. And, as we are all aware, there was more to come from that side of Paul (as well as plenty of great songs).

Having said that, no-one, least of all the band, expected things to last more than year or two. Remember Ringo at one time said that when it was all over, he was going to open a chain of hairdressers. (Competitions

It’s strange that this song doesn’t feel like part of my childhood, because it still seems as familiar to me as so many other Beatles songs.

I’m fairly indifferent to it. It’s a long way from Paul’s worst, but in terms of a song being a B-side it’s definitely inferior to to Love Me Do and deserving of its B status. A saving grace is that it clocks in at under two minutes.

Comments

I’ve got a soft spot for the early b-sides and “P.S. I Love You” is no exception.
Whilst it’s unlikely to ever be heralded from the roof-tops, it’s also unlikely to ever get over-played (or played at all by Tony Blackburn on SOTS) or over-analysed.

I also suspect it went a long way towards Paul being the early front-runner for the role of “favourite Beatle!”

It’s a crowd pleaser, aimed directly at the ladies. Both this and Love Me Do are sung in the first person (I) directly to a second (you). I like the single word backing vocals until the last 40 seconds when John and Paul harmonise and, in what would become a characteristic for The Beatles, add a twist to the basic musical idea. It’s very simple but the rhymes are neat, “treasure…together…forever”.

Interestingly, Andy White plays blocks, just as a child might. No wonder Ringo was pissed off. My guess is that White had been hired and was going to be used no matter what and he was hired because of Pete Best’s failings. It was no reflection on Ringo’s abilities even though he took it to be so.

I think you are being harsh, Carl. The song and its performance is rather sweet but not oleaginous.

It probably is a little bit harsh, considering how callow Macca was at this stage as a songwriter. But it’s stimulating discussion, which is the point of this project.
As for Ringo, he still hasn’t forgiven George Martin for putting Andy White in, as I recall from an interview with him that I read not that many years ago.

Just listening to it – dreadful (from today’s perspective, and from someone with no youthful emotional connection to it).

I must check Revolution In The Head – i’ve never thought of the Beatles as being out of tune before, but this is full of musically dodgy moments – the vocal and backing vocals from 0:41-0:44 and the same section at 1:12-1:14; it’s just about tolerable the third time this section comes around. The two guitars are out of tune with each other throughout, showing prominently in certain places.

I came across a letter from a reader in a late 1963 NME earlier today, pointing out how many Merseybeat songs had YOU or ME or I in the titles – the Beatles being prime offenders. Even then people were beginning to notice this material was pretty thin stuff.

Yes, they became a phenomenon – and when they hit their stride/maturity many of the songs had some kind of magic – but a lot of this early stuff is pretty poor, and just doesn’t stand the attention of musicologists and genius-seekers 50+ years on. I’d be happy to never hear the Beatles first few singles and first two or three albums again.

Yeah not a favourite and now that all those things have been pointed out that’s maybe why.

But like all early Beatles it just resonates with me for the time – I was 10 years old, absolutely LOVED The Beatles. Also there was a boy in our class at school called Patrick Senior and the girls used to tease him with this song. Poor bugger, he was a bright kid and I liked him but his parents belonged to the Exclusive Brethren and he basically wasn’t allowed to have any fun, couldn’t come to birthday parties, school outings, even to someone’s place after school. He needed someone to love him. So thanks Paul

With you there, Mousey. A bit of fluff, maybe (wasn’t it originally supposed to be the A-side, or did I dream that?), but at the time it was like NOTHING we had ever heard before from any point in the popular music spectrum.* Not a ‘better’ song than LMD by any objective yardstick, but nevertheless the voices, the chords, the instrumentation and the sheer energy that burst forth from the grooves were new and fresh. I remember spending hours trying to work out the chords on my Lucky 7.

You can be as revisionist as you like, but in my mind the two songs are indivisible, and likely to stay that way.

*Though in retrospect its antecedents were probably the likes of Bobby Vee or Del Shannon.

I always preferred this to Love Me Do – it just seemed to me a better tune and a more clever lyrical idea. Also the vocals where Paul scats (is that right?) ‘You know I want you to…’ is typical of the, for me, more interesting arrangement. It also beats ‘Ask Me Why’, the B side of ‘Please Please Me’….but we are getting ahead of ourselves.

There is Johnny Mercer song with the same title from way before this one. Maybe Macca was aware of it from his dad’s stuff?
What I like about this one is the chord changes. Not at all your standard beat combo chords.

What we all, of course, need to keep in mind – and I know we do, but it does no harm to keep repeating it – was that this stuff was all seen as ephemeral back then. Three hours in a studio, session men if need be, knock out X tracks. NOBODY back then could have imagined we’d be talking about pop records like hallowed artefacts 50+ years on.

Actually, in my continued trawl through 1963 NMEs (for other reasons) I’ve come across several passing references from people to the Beatles longevity. Even a fan writing in says ‘in 5 years the boys will be settled in proper jobs’; a cabinet minister was quoted saying ‘the Beatles have no future’; but, cannily, DJ/crooner Jimmy Young said that ‘the Beatles WILL still be around in 5 years – but their sound will have changed’. That last view may seem like stating the bleeding obvious (about any artist) now, but it was wildly on the fringe of popular opinion back in 1963.

First, you’ve got the extended chorus – which might naturally/normally resolve to D after the A of “PS”. Macca inserts a D, but only as part of a – who saw this coming – weird Bb chord, extending the whole refrain by a further 2 bars over “I love you, you you” to that final D. A nice, normal, homely 8 bar section is subverted to a (radical for the times) 10 bar one. Sharp eyed AWers will no doubt contrast this with the delayed/extended “Love Me Do” phrasing used so effectively on the A side.

Second mind blower for me is the use of the 7th chord for the return to the main D tonic. 50s rock music would simply not do this. In the days of Eddie Cochrane or Buddy Holly, you’d get a 5th chord (A) or maybe a 4th (G). Macca, in one of his first compositions, eschews this and gives us a major chord run of Bb C D. That, right there, is musical innovation. He uses it again to greet Billy Shears in Sgt Pepper, in Lady Madonna (“make ends meet”) and from then on, you can barely move for people apeing it, from the Kinks, Stones, Bowie etc.

Ha! Thanks. I’ve been studying the Fabs’ musical innovation for a little while now – hugely indebted to Dominic Pedler’s doorstopper, ‘The Songwriting Secrets of The Beatles’. As he makes clear, no PS I Love You, no Gimme Shelter, no Suffragette City.